What Is a Cloaca?

💡 The Answer

• A cloaca is the rear orifice of many vertebrate animals.
• It serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts.
• Common in amphibians, reptiles, birds, cartilaginous fish, and a few mammals.
• From this opening animals excrete both urine and feces.
• The term also applies to some invertebrates with analogous openings.